An interview with photographer Amy Stein

You know how, every once in a while, you see a photograph and think, "Whoa! Who took that?!" That happened to me twice in the past six months, and both times the photographer was Amy Stein. I adored her photo "The Watering Hole" (above) at the Affordable Art Fair last summer, but was so distracted by a panel discussion I was on that I neglected to take her card. For months afterward, I was mad at myself for not getting the name. Then I saw wonderful, strong images of women and guns on the internet and surfed around to learn more about the photographer. Imagine my delight when I saw it was the same one I'd been looking for.

Amy Stein's work surprises me in its ability to be both humorous and heart-breaking. I was delighted when she agreed to be interviewed for this blog. Take a look at her thoughtful answers and photographs, and then learn from my experience -- take note of her name!

LISA: A lot of your work seems to be about people and things where they don't belong: "Stranded," "Domesticated," and even the Halloween "superheros" in Harlem... Is this intentional, or just something you're drawn to?

AMY STEIN: Most of my work explores the effects of personal and cultural isolation. I tend to be interested in situations and relationship that at once seem alien or out of place, but exist right out in the open and speak of deeper and more profound truths about our nature and our society.

With Stranded I was inspired in large part by the images of people trapped on their roofs after the levees broke and flooded New Orleans. Extreme poverty is a shameful condition that exists all around us, but for the subject to touch folks in a meaningful way and become part of the popular conversation it literally required desperate people to climb on their roofs and write "HELP!" Those images and that thought stuck with me and I began to experience that same sense of selective connection when I saw the faces of people whose cars had broken down on the side of the road. In the past I would speed by and not give it a second thought. After Katrina I began to see stranded motorists in a new light and wanted to connect with them to hear their stories and capture what I saw as small narratives of personal and societal detachment.

Domesticated evolved as I became more and more interested in hunting culture while working on the Women and Guns series. I met a number of taxidermists and became interested in the psychology behind venturing into the wild to kill an animal and then paying a considerable amount of money to reanimate it and make it a permanent fixture in the living room. To me this practice came to perfectly symbolize our schizophrenic relationship with the natural world. We consciously insulate ourselves from the wild around us and the wild within us and then we subconsciously long to reconnect with the natural world. I began to use taxidermy as a symbol of this internal human tension and stage photos of human-animal interaction that I had heard of or read about in this small town in Pennsylvania. All of the Domesticated work tries to capture a moment where we are drawn away from our comfort zone and forced to confront the “wild.”

LISA: I see from your CV that you have a background in political science. How does that influence (if at all) your photographs of politically charged subjects like Women and Guns, or your new Katrina project?

AMY STEIN: That's an interesting question because before I decided to take up photography in 2003, my life was much more politically focused than it is now. Both my undergrad and my master’s degrees were in political science and I produced one of the first political websites, Policy.com. I was involved in the world of politics and social activism, but when you are mired in the political world, you lose connection to the people and purpose behind the policy. Once I left DC and led a life outside of the mechanics of politics I began to experience a connection to the issues that is a little more real and little more profound.

Women and Guns started as a reaction to the DC sniper episode and the inevitable gun debate it prompted. I started the project with a definite and strong point of view about guns, but as I traveled the country and met and photographed women my stance evolved. Most rural people grow up with guns around the house. For these folks guns don't hold some numinous quality and they are not making a political statement by owning them. They are tools of basic existence and as the project progressed I sought to tell that side of the story, too. The most interesting part of the series for me was the reaction to the photos of people in DC and New York. Friends who I considered politically progressive and open-minded would see the work and react in what I considered calloused and prejudiced ways toward the subjects of the photographs.

All of my work starts from a political point of view. I consider a project successful when my experience with the subject allows me to transcend the political debate and my point of view is no longer immediately obvious to the viewer.

LISA: Is it emotionally difficult to work in New Orleans? In some ways, taking pictures of the destruction must be similar to being a war photographer...

AMY STEIN: When I first traveled to New Orleans in March to start the southern leg of my Stranded series, the scale of the destruction overwhelmed me. There was a strong impulse to photograph the rubble and ruin that came from a place that I imagine is similar to our compulsion to take pictures of sunsets or the Grand Canyon. Something about the scale that makes you want to capture the moment and share it with those who are not there. I quickly realized I could not do the tragedy justice by trying to find beauty amid the debris, the overturned cars, and the flooded shotgun homes.

I came back to New York to finish up my thesis project, but New Orleans was always on my mind and I wanted to do something to help. I was fortunate when Charles Traub asked me to get involved with the Do You Know What It Means project. For the past few months I have been on the ground in New Orleans directing the effort to create a living breathing record of life in before Katrina. We are collecting family photos and recording personal stories of everyday life in the hopes of bringing the community back together, if only in a virtual sense.

At first I was a little nervous about taking time off from making pictures just as I was starting to get some attention for my work, but now I believe the experience of collecting and sharing other people's personal photos has reenergized my belief in the power of the medium. Sitting in a FEMA trailer or in a crowded apartment with a displaced family looking at
their old photos of Christmastime or a wedding, you see all the recent tragedy melt away as they are transported back to a more wonderful time in their lives. That is the power of the snapshot. The photos collected in shoeboxes and photo albums are evocative without effort. Most fine art photography struggles to deliver this kind of emotional punch because
meaning often trumps the moment. This experience has had an intense impact on my psyche and my art. I hope to come back to my work in the next few months and bring a more spontaneous and free perspective to my process.